Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Cloud, edge and decentralized computing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FJB who wrote (1188)	7/25/2014 4:56:07 PM
From: Glenn Petersen	1 Recommendation Recommended By FJB Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1685

Amazon was premature in cutting its AWS pricing. There was probably no need to be proactive. While the new pricing probably had a huge impact on some of the smaller players like Rackspace, it is not going to impact Amazon's deep-pocketed competition. Amazon can no longer take its cloud leadership for granted With Microsoft's strong numbers and Google's continued progress, Amazon Web Services must realize it's in a three-cloud race By David Linthicum InfoWorld July 25, 2014 Good news for Microsoft: "Strong sales of cloud products to businesses helped lift Microsoft's revenue by 18 percent last quarter, though its profits declined," reports Reuters. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a call with financial analysts that commercial cloud revenue grew almost 150 percent year over year to $4.4 billion annually, driven primarily by sales of Office 365, the Azure IaaS and PaaS products, and Dynamics CRM Online. You have to hand it to Microsoft. It has taken the "slow and steady" approach to cloud computing, and it's worked out. Indeed, many pundits called Microsoft late to the market, but thanks to the company's existing developer base and loyal Office and operating system technology users, it's gained real traction in the cloud. As a result, the cloud competition is shaping up to be a three-provider race, with Microsoft now a serious contender alongside Google and Amazon Web Services. Today, AWS is the provider to beat in the cloud race, of course, but both Microsoft and Google are making strong efforts. Google has a sound PaaS and IaaS offering, and like Microsoft is gaining share. Although Google doesn't have the same installed base of software as Microsoft, Google has nonetheless innovated its way to higher market share. Indeed, a new report by Jillian Mirandi projects Google's overall cloud business -- Google Cloud Platform, Google App Engine, and Google Compute Engine -- will grow 84 percent this year to hit $1.6 billion in revenue. If you're doing the math, that puts Google in third, and Microsoft in second, and AWS in first place. AWS has very few negatives as a public cloud provider, and it hasn't stubbed its toes in the last few years as many people had expected. At this point I don't think that's likely to happen, so AWS's pace will remain strong. Although AWS's lead is huge (and well deserved), the market is beginning to normalize, and Google and Microsoft are accelerating their market penetration. I don't see this as a neck-and-neck-and-neck race anytime soon -- AWS's lead is too strong -- but I do see three strong providers, which helps make the cloud market and the various technologies powering it much more interesting.7 infoworld.com